Dice took down the June plaque and put up the July. I’d been with the family almost ten months, and I felt I belonged now, perhaps more than Queen did. She sought me out, in the barn, in the dairy, by the slow creek on the hottest summer evening, when the sheep tracked to the banks for a last drink before bed, kissing their snowy faces in the flat flow. I wondered whether it was wise to associate so much with her, but she was my best friend in the family. Sometimes I thought about her baby still growing, and what would happen when Dice found out. That thought scared me more than the idea of Lindsay telling Isaac where I was, and Isaac telling my mother.

I distracted myself with summertime and its work, which never ended.

Colors of a North Carolina mountain summer: Chartreuse (when the grass or leaves are between you and the sun). Emerald (when you are between the sun and the grass). Indigo—all kinds of high-frequency blues, the kinds that might damage your eyes. Gold and pink for the wildflowers and the sunsets. Shining brown for the forest floor and thunderstorms.

We ate lamb’s-quarters, the plentiful wild volunteers. The love-in-a-mist bloomed. The cucumbers grew massive unless they were picked. The zucchinis had beautiful even spots, like butterflies. For a while, we’d go hunting for a single tomato. And then the day came that there were too many.

After a cloudburst, the plot dripped with diamonds. We harvested the tomatoes, coating our hands with itchy green juice that dried rubbery and opaque on our fingers.

The basil came out like a jungle. The more we cut the stems, the more they grew, spreading out low. We tucked basil in all the beds to freshen them. Basil in the pillowcases. When we opened the door to the bedrooms, basil air exhaled.

One morning, one of the sheep must have disturbed a copperhead. I found her prone body in the meadow as I was guiding the flock home. I’d failed to protect her. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t drag her, but I didn’t want to leave her to rot. The other sheep looked at her, silent and patient as always. I remembered Queen telling me that sheep miss their dead.

I told Sara, and she said, “Gemini will gather up the bones and we’ll give her a proper burial here, in the place where we bury all our departed friends.”

But if there was a burial I didn’t witness it.

* * *

“I think I’m starting to show,” Queen said a few days later, as we sat in the far end of the hayloft, in the hot hours after lunch. We stripped rosemary off stems and piled it on the mesh dryer, just to have something to do with our hands.